Eye-eye matey, says Jones

By Suzanne McFadden

New Zealand America's Cup helmsman Murray Jones has a fresh outlook on life, and hopefully, his days of scaling the mast are over

Team New Zealand helmsman Murray Jones is seeing the America's Cup through different eyes this time: they used to belong to someone else.

Jones has undergone corneal transplants in both eyes - from two different donors. He had one operation before he sailed in Team New Zealand's victory at the 1995 America's Cup in San Diego, the other since.

Before surgery, Jones wore contact lenses, but his vision was getting worse.

"It took a long time for them to heal afterwards. I had stitches in my eye for a year," he said. "But now they've settled down nicely, and I can see fine."

Jones will be relying on his new vision today to spot the windshifts and manoeuvre the testy boats in the Road to the America's Cup regatta on the Waitemata Harbour.

He is likely to share the steering duties with skipper Russell Coutts and fellow tactician Dean Barker in the best-of-nine series this weekend.

"Helming these big boats is great fun. They're so powerful you can't afford to make any mistakes - a collision in these things is disastrous," Jones said.

It is a welcome change from his role in San Diego four years ago, when he became famous as the controversial man-up-the-mast on the black boats. Not a great fan of heights, Jones is trying to convince everyone that there will not be much need for that role in Auckland's stronger breezes.

"I was looking for wind, which I don't think you'll have to do much of here. One of the things I used to do up there was kick the battens over, but that was a light airs thing. I hope it's a job of the past."

Jones was introduced to the wheel after 1995, when Team New Zealand realised they needed a back-up for Coutts and someone to drive against him, since there is no defender series. But Jones says he is not weighed down by any extra responsibility as the driver.

"The great thing about driving these boats is that the whole crew participate. You can steer them with the sails - the mainsail and jib trimmers play a huge part in manoeuvring them.

"And the best part is you don't have to tell the guys in our team what to do. It just happens.

"In fact, it's pretty quiet on board. You don't have to say much at all, because everyone automatically knows what to do. They're so experienced and so good."

Last night Jones was not sure who would be sailing the boat this weekend. A handful of the sailing brains trust will sit down this morning and come up with a crew list before they go out on the water.

They are not a disorganised bunch - this is a deliberate ploy.

"We want to just front up and sail. We're trying to put ourselves under pressure," Jones said. "That's how we think we can get the maximum out of this regatta.

"We want to put ourselves into a similar situation as we will be in this time next year, facing challengers who have been racing for a while, and we come in cold.

"This week we tuned the rigs on the black and white boats and practised a few starts, but that's it."

Jones has faced a few interesting challenges in the last 12 months. He had to race against Coutts in the final of the Bermuda Gold Cup (Coutts won) and a couple of weeks later, he was scaling the Himalayas.

Jones and his wife, Olympic sailing silver medallist Jan Shearer, climbed to base camp on Mt Everest.

"We decided we needed a different holiday. We've been to the beach plenty of times," he said.

Make that every day - and every day from now until March 2000.

Pictured: Team New Zealand helmsman Murray Jones.